Chapter 10. Lenore
Lenore
I reach overhead in the feeble light, patting the length of a crude wood beam until my fingers find a pull chain. With a click, the attic blinks to life.
I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been up here.
It’s not what you’d call cozy, but it isn’t horror movie eerie, either.
At the heart of the room, the massive brick chimney tapers into the ceiling.
Plastic house wrap crunches beneath my shoes, laid over the floorboards to wick moisture during the wetter months.
The air has that fusty quality of a room that hasn’t been aired out in some time.
Planting my hands on my hips, I assess the situation.
Plastic bins and cardboard boxes are pushed beneath the low pitch, leaving space in the center to walk.
Some boxes are labeled with marker and masking tape—Christmas ornaments and kids’ clothes in my grandmother’s meticulous handwriting—but most are unmarked.
I grab a box at random and drag it toward me, plastic bunching underneath.
Over the next several hours, I sort through family photo albums and stacks of old newspapers.
Anything that might be of interest to the historical society, I set to one side.
Everything else, I pack away, label it, and slide the box back in with the others.
I don’t want to give anything up, but realistically, there’s nowhere for it to go.
I select a few things, sparingly, to add to my own box of mementos: a black-and-white photo of my grandparents on the beach, smiling, young, and in love. Gran looks smoking in a halter-top two-piece with a high waist. Scrawled on the back: Ogunquit, Maine, 1967.
I come across a clear plastic bin filled with her handmade quilts.
With a twinge of remorse, I shove it aside.
I’m not in the right headspace to go through those.
I thought working up here today might make me feel a little better.
I don’t have space for everything, but if the historical society is able to keep some piece of our family history out of a landfill, then maybe I haven’t failed my grandmother completely.
In some small way, her name will live on.
I’m fighting a losing battle with a tinsel garland when my phone vibrates in my back pocket. I swipe to answer and stick the phone between my ear and shoulder, leaving my hands free to work. “Wow. An actual phone call,” I say. “To what do I owe the honor?”
“I’ve been busy,” Damien answers defensively.
“Yeah, I know. Prepping for a whole-ass baby.”
“What other kind of baby is there?”
“What?” I ask, distracted. I’m tangled up in tinsel.
“You said ‘a whole-ass baby.’ That implies the existence of a half-ass baby.”
“I don’t even know what an ‘ass baby’ is.”
“I think it might be the final evolution of a food baby.”
I give up the fight, tinsel rustling as my arms drop to my sides. At this point, I’m wearing the garland like a thneed. Actually, it might be wearing me. “Please don’t tell me that was a poop joke, Damien,” I say. “I’d like to believe you’ve matured past the age of twelve.”
“Get used to disappointment.”
I roll my eyes and shift the phone from my shoulder to my hand. “How’s Katie?”
“Miserable,” he says, sobering a little. “We’ve tried everything to get her to go into labor, but it’s looking like she might need to be induced next week.”
“Dare I ask what ‘everything’ entails?”
My brother snickers. “Well—”
“You know what, don’t answer that.” I shut my eyes against the mental image. Sometimes, I wish brain bleach was a thing.
“How are things going up there?” he asks.
“Fine.” Still wearing the tinsel, I drag another plastic bin toward me and pop the lid.
It’s filled with sewing supplies—folded fabrics, spools of thread, shiny metal bobbins.
“I’m going through some stuff in the attic right now.
” I take the phone into my hand. “Hey, do you remember Patricia Wilcox, the lady at the historical society?”
“Uh, maybe,” he says, which means no, he absolutely does not.
“I think we went to their fundraiser luncheon, the year that Gran donated that quilt for the charity auction,” I prompt.
“That’s right. We hid under the tablecloth with those fluffernutter sandwiches.”
I close my eyes. “We do not speak about the fluffernutter sandwiches.” We stole an entire plate from the potluck table.
I was so sick by the time we got home that I puked in my grandmother’s yellow gardening boots before we made it through the front door.
To this day, I can’t look at a tub of Jet-Puffed in the grocery store without gagging.
“Sorry,” he says, without conviction.
“Anyway,” I drawl, “she asked me to see whether Gran left anything behind that the historical society might be interested in. Do you remember whether we have anything that’s super old?”
“I mean, the house,” he suggests.
I slump in frustration, tinsel swishing. “Damien,” I say, “we are not donating the house.”
“Oh, yeah, no.”
“Though, while we’re on the subject”—I push the sewing bin away and pull a large cardboard box toward me—“how come you never mentioned that Callan took over as groundskeeper?”
“It didn’t seem relevant.”
Yeah. I expected that. “Aren’t you a little worried?”
“About?”
“We’re selling the farm, and your best friend is going to be out of a job,” I point out. “Don’t you feel a little—I don’t know, guilty about it? Like it’s our fault.”
“Since when are you so worried about Cal,” he says, lightly accusatory.
“It’s hard not to be.” I fold back the cardboard flaps.
“I mean, we’re kind of up in each other’s space.
” I don’t mean for it to sound like anything more than bumping into each other around the farm, but as soon as the words leave my mouth, yesterday in the bookstore flashes through my mind.
I mouth Dumbass and mime punching myself in the head.
Predictably, my brother asks, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I know Damien. If I say anything that tips him off to how much time I’m spending around his best friend, it’ll have the opposite of the desired effect. I need to ease into it.
“Nothing, really,” I say in the most casual way possible, except for some reason, my voice is an entire octave higher than normal? “You know, just that he’s always around here working on something. The farm matters to him.” Perhaps, in some ways, even more than it matters to us.
Damien exhales, a rush of wind in my ear. “It’s not like there’s an alternative. Cal’s practical. He gets it.”
“Right.” I shrug out of the tangled garland and set it aside in a pile.
“What he needs is to leave that dead-end town,” Damien presses on. “I did, and look how that worked out for me. I’ve got a stable job. A family. A house that isn’t falling apart.”
I peek inside the box. It’s filled with old picture frames. “You forgot to mention the lovable mutt.”
“Gregory is a purebred bernedoodle,” he says.
“I just really need you to understand how that’s an oxymoron.”
Somewhere in the background, Katie’s voice warbles.
“Hey, I gotta go,” Damien says. “We’re gonna be late for birthing class. I’ll try to call back later.”
“Remember to breathe,” I say hurriedly. “In through your nose, out through your—”
My brother hangs up on me.
I set my phone aside and slide a picture frame from the box to get a better look.
It’s a painting.
Not my painting. It looks old—the varnish has turned a smoky yellow, and hairline craquelure mars the surface.
The portrait depicts a woman in profile, with a long aquiline nose and auburn hair tucked beneath a ruffle cap.
The signature in the bottom right corner is splotchy, bordering on illegible.
I turn it over to inspect the other side. Nails hold the wood backing in place, but there is nothing to indicate who painted it, nor who they were painting.
Behind me, footsteps creak on the stairs. Callan sticks his head through the attic hatch. “Thought maybe you were getting hungry up here,” he says, sliding a plate toward me. An egg salad sandwich with potato chips.
“Thank you. Have you seen these?” I ask, pulling another painting from the box. It’s a still life—bread on a cutting board, a stoneware jug, and russet apples—with the same illegible signature in the corner.
With a grunt, Callan clambers up into the attic and settles on the floor beside me, one arm hooked over a bent knee. He mops his brow on the back of his arm as he stares at the painting. After a day’s work, he smells like sweat and dirt, but somehow, it’s not unpleasant. “Are these yours?”
“No, they must be really old. I had no idea they were up here.”
He lifts the flap on the cardboard box as though checking to see whether it’s labeled.
I angle the still life toward him. “Any idea what that says?”
His brow crinkles thoughtfully as he stares at the signature. “It looks like somebody Button.”
I take a bite of the sandwich and frown at the painting while chewing. “Is ‘Button’ a last name?”
“Benjamin Button?” he says, but it sounds more like a question than a statement.
I wipe my hands together to brush off the bread crumbs and pull another painting from the box. “They’re all by the same person.”
There are six paintings in total, varied in subject matter: a handsome young man in a regimental frock coat and tricorn hat, seated at a desk, staring confidently back at the viewer; verdant pastoral scenes with sheep and cattle.
“Maybe we should google it,” Cal suggests.
An hour later, the plate is empty but for the bread crust. We’ve tunneled down the rabbit hole with no end in sight.
“Button” is undoubtedly a real surname—one shared by some twenty thousand–odd people, which doesn’t help narrow our search.
“Button artist” brings up an array of artwork made from buttons, and searching “Button painter” unearths a respected realist who had some association with the New York School in the 1950s, but nothing that aligns with the paintings in the attic.
The obvious conclusion is that this somebody was, well, a nobody: An artist who never shared their work with anyone, or tried to and failed. Someone whose paintings are rotting in an old attic. Whose name has been lost to history. I push back my shoulders.
“Well, we both know what this means,” I say.
Callan sits with his back leaned against an antique trunk filled with musty clothes. His jeans are gray from kneeling in the dust to rifle through boxes. “Let’s hear it.”
“We need to call Patty.”